On Sunday, July 27, 1890, Vincent van Gogh did not return in time for dinner to the Auberge Ravoux in Auvers sur Oise. He had been staying at the inn since he arrived in the small village two months earlier. It was part of his daily routine to have his evening meal at the inn after spending the mornings and late afternoons painting in the surrounding countryside. But on this day, he failed to show up for the evening meal.
Van Gogh had moved to Auvers on May 20, 1890, after a year-long stay at the asylum in Saint-Rémy near Arles in Southern France. At the time, Vincent believed that his mental health problems were connected to the climate and strong sunlight of the South and that a move back to Northern France would alleviate his health issues. Moving to Auvers would also bring him closer to his brother Theo and his sister-in-law, Jo van Gogh Bonger, who were living in nearby Paris with their newborn son Vincent Willem van Gogh, named after him.
Historical postcards, taken some 15-25 years after van Gogh’s stay in Auvers sur Oise, give a sense of the rural setting of the village. It had became a popular destination for many artists including van Gogh after a direct railroad line to Paris opened in the second half of the nineteenth century. Among the artists that came to live and work in Auvers sur Oise were Paul Cézanne, Charles-François Dabigny, Camille Pissarro, Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, and Norbert Goeneutte.
At the beginning of his stay, van Gogh was full of hope and enthusiasm about his new life in Auvers. He wrote to Theo and Jo that
“it’s above all an illness of the South that I caught, and . . . the return here [to Auvers] will be enough to dispel all that.”
At first, life in Auvers seemed like a successful new start for van Gogh. His stay in Auvers became one of the most productive periods of his life. Van Gogh completed a painting each day on average, producing some seventy canvases in the seventy days that he lived in Auvers. Today, the value of the paintings of this period alone exceeds 1 billion US Dollars.
Van Gogh’s profusion of creative energy came to an abrupt end on that Sunday. Around nine o’clock, he staggered into the inn, bleeding from a gunshot wound to his chest. When the innkeeper Ravoux asked him what he had done, he replied: “I tried to kill myself.”
Vincent van Gogh succumbed to his injuries two days later on July 29,1890, at age 37.
Most of the details of the day on which van Gogh suffered the fatal gunshot wound are unknown. He had been lodging at the inn run by the Ravoux family for little over two months now and the family had grown accustomed to seeing him set off each day to work in the surrounding countryside.
On that Sunday, van Gogh had started the day as he usually did, heading out with canvas and paints to work outside. He returned to the inn sometime around midday. In the afternoon, he left the inn again, this time wandering off into a wheat field nearby. Hours later, after sunset, he returned to the inn mortally wounded. Nothing is known about what happened. Nothing that would offer any clues as to where van Gogh went to paint in the morning, which painting it was that he had worked on that.Sunday morning, or what happened in the afternoon after he walked into a wheat field nearby. Theories about the events, however, abound.
What is the last painting that Vincent van Gogh worked on before his death?
The question is without a definite answer to this day. Researchers generally point to three paintings as most likely candidates for van Gogh’s last painting and all three works are part of a series of double-square canvasses that van Gogh used for the first time during his stay in Auvers sur Oise.
Based on what is know from van Gogh’s letters and witness accounts, a several of these seventy paintings could be the last painting that van Gogh worked on, but the ultimate answer to the question is hidden in the events of July 27, 1890. Most scholars and researchers agree that it was one of the new double-square format paintings, but exactly which painting it is remains a matter of considerable controversy and dispute.
Three of the double-square paintings have been proposed to be van Gogh’s final painting: Daubigny’s Garden, Wheatfield with Crows, and Tree Roots.
Wheatfield with Crows is frequently cited as van Gogh’s last painting. It supports a most dramatic and emotionally captivating narrative of a final work by a suffering, tormented, and lonely genius. The iconic image lends itself to a romantic, cinematic interpretation that is easy to imagine as the final scene in a Hollywood movie story board. A sudden gunshot breaks the silence of the wheat field. Crows scatter into the sky. In the background dark, menacing storm clouds gather. The sad loneliness of the empty wheat field with the dirt road leading to nowhere — the entire composition can be experienced as a premonitory vision of the van Gogh’s final moment. In this narrative, the painting becomes the suicide note of a tragic genius.
Daubigny’s Garden had a great personal importance for van Gogh. He made three paintings of the garden and described one of the paintings as “one of my most carefully thought-out canvases.” In a letter, he confided to his brother Theo that he was realizing “a picture I have had in mind ever since I came here.”
The case for Daubigny’s Garden as van Gogh’s last painting is complicated by the fact that there are two square-canvas versions of the garden, not to mention a third composition on one of the standard canvas sizes. Van Gogh’s comments on the painting in his letters show that it was aiming to achieve a new level of mastery and craftsmanship. It may not be van Gogh’s last painting but it appears to be the most thought about and planned work of his months in Auvers.
Tree Roots is one of van Gogh’s most enigmatic works. It is characterized by a high degree of abstraction, in part the result of a narrow framing of the subject within the double-square frame, which sets this painting apart from most of van Gogh’s other paintings. It seems as if van Gogh is but one small step away from full abstraction.
It is tempting to see the painting in this light, as the lone vanguard of things to come in van Gogh’s development as a painter, visible for just an instant before he finally succumbed to his struggle with depression. In this view, the thirty-seven year old van Gogh arrived at the threshold to one of the most radical transformation of painting, the introduction of abstract paintings, but tragically he was unable to cross that threshold himself.
New Discoveries on Google Street View
In his recent book, Attacked at the very root (Arthenon 2020), Wouter van der Veen argues that Tree Roots is in fact Van Gogh’s last painting. The argument had been made before by Louis van Tilborgh and Teio Meedendorp of the Vincent Van Gogh Museum in 2013, but van der Veen presents new discoveries that not only support Tilborgh and Meedendorp’s claim but also provide new clues about the location where van Gogh painted this enigmatic and pioneering work.
During the isolation of COVID epidemic, van der Veen was looking through a collection of postcards showing photographs of Auvers sur Oise taken in the early twentieth century. He realized that one of the postcards included a section of roots on the side of the road that resembled the roots depicted in van Gogh’s painting!
These type of uncovered root growths were quite common at the time and can be seen around the region to this day. Fostered by locals for centuries, the new growth is trimmed for the wood. This done without harm the roots so that the cycle repeats itself every year.
Van der Veen was able to visit the site and his arguments gained sufficient acceptance so that the location was promptly covered up with a wooden shack until an official decision about what to do with the location can be reached. If they only could have gotten Christo to wrap the collection of roots on that roadside!
But what does this possible discovery of the objects painted by van Gogh in Roots really mean? To begin with, there is a significant margin of doubt that the location identified is actually the location of the subject of van Gogh’s painting. Root growth may change considerable over the decades and the current location may have looked differently 130 years ago. No survey of other root growth in the area has been undertaken. There may be, or could have been a century ago, other locations in the vicinity with comparable root growth. Finally, van Gogh may not have painted a literal, “photographic” depiction of the root growth. The painting may be a composite taken from different growths, or deliberately composed for visual purposes.
In addition to the many questions that can be raised about the suggested location of the roots painted by van Gogh, the central question about van Gogh’s last painting remains as obscure as ever. Knowing the location of van Gogh’s subject matter of the Roots does not mean that this was the painting that van Gogh worked on last. In the end, despite the new discoveries by van der Veen, the identity of van Gogh’s last painting remains an enigmatic mystery that may never be solved.
Note: We’ve added a new digital souls: Vincent. He is designed to be a virtual Vincent van Gogh. Vincent is currently powered by OpenAI’s GPT 4o mini and he is ready to discuss any part of his life with you.
Van Gogh’s Tree Roots Revisited
by H-Ray Heine (2022/2024)
6.5 x 4,5 inch Giclée print
Archival quality paper and ink
Numbered and signed by the artist
Certificate of Authenticity
Limited edition of 20 prints.
Artist, philosopher, startup founder. Editor of DIGITALSOULS.COM.
https://hrayheine.com/
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